


Choices

by spoke



Category: Chrono Cross
Genre: Yuletide, challenge:Yuletide 2007
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-12-25
Updated: 2007-12-25
Packaged: 2017-10-30 01:29:38
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 604
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/326253
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spoke/pseuds/spoke





	Choices

**Author's Note:**

  * For [argle_fraster](https://archiveofourown.org/users/argle_fraster/gifts).



 

 

She is silent as the very grave while he moves around the room, not so much pacing as fidgeting. He cannot be still no matter how he tries, and hasn't been able since they came to this forsaken place. He'd been able to confine it to a nervous twitch every time someone spoke to him, though. 

Until they put him in the room with _her._ Pale red eyes like something out of a legend, and he would know which legend, wouldn't he? He was Black Wind, and no matter how they distanced themselves from the past, people still knew what the squad was named for. Though most of his fellows would probably call it a fairy tale, and laugh at him for being nervous. She was only a woman, in a silly white dress with a serpent headband. Like a priestess in one of the old religions. 

Well, they weren't in here, were they?

"Are you quite all right?" 

And now, he has nearly fallen into the dresser. At the rate he's going, clearly, he will be lucky to make it out of the room alive. "Q-quite all right, Miss Riddel." he managed, and turned to face the door so that he doesn't have to see her slightly amused expression. 

"If you say so." she responds. He can hear the soft rustle of clothes, and then the sound of water? Oh yes, he'd brought some in when he came on shift. "Perhaps a little drink? You do seem nervous. Don't worry," and suddenly her hand is on his shoulder and he freezes completely so that he won't jump and hurt her.

Turning ever so slowly and carefully, he takes the glass from her hand. "Thank you, Miss Riddel." 

There is nothing for it but to drink, even though she has not moved at all and isn't even a foot away now. But up close... up close, there is a warmth in her eyes that he had not seen with half the room between them. Up close, there is a calm and nobility about her that leaves him unsurprised to hear his own voice when the glass leaves his lips. "Do you... ever wonder.."

"Yes?" she asks, smiling still as her eyebrows meet the band of the serpent on her forehead.

"If what you're doing is right?" he finishes, biting his lip to keep from rambling on. 

"Why would it not be?"

The lamplight is flickering, catching specks of gold throughout the room and distracting his eyes. He needs to focus and cannot understand why it is becoming difficult. "Because... because it isn't what you want to do, or what you think you should do. Because it's only orders that you have been given."

"You believe your orders are not right?" she asks, stepping back and folding her hands into her sleeves. 

"I don't know." he whispers, and feels they may be the most honest words he has spoken since coming into this Manor to spy.

There is a commotion somewhere outside the room, a noise that breaks into the strange bubble of time in which they had been speaking. "You must decide soon," she tells him, seeming as unreal as she had when he first entered. "Before all choices begin to converge in such a way that it will seem you have none left." 

He frowns at that, feeling something darken in his mind that must be visible in his expression. "There are always choices." he tells her, and is startled by the strength in his voice.

She is still smiling that mysterious smile when the guard enters to take her to the Commander. 

 


End file.
